Coalition, Sea Lab team up to connect students with beach marine life

Saturday

May 11, 2013 at 12:01 AMMay 11, 2013 at 6:21 AM

When Jess Sasso, a volunteer with the Buzzards Bay Coalition, told a group of New Bedford fourth-graders they would be spending an hour on East Beach looking for seashells, they could hardly contain their excitement.

ARIEL WITTENBERG

NEW BEDFORD — When Jess Sasso, a volunteer with the Buzzards Bay Coalition, told a group of Hayden-McFadden fourth-graders Friday that they would be spending an hour on East Beach looking for seashells, the students could hardly contain their excitement.

"Yes!" they whispered to each other in hushed enthusiasm.

Only half of the 30 or so students had ever been to the beach before, and when they arrived on the strip of sand after walking from Sea Lab, they marveled at the fog rolling in and discussed strategies to prevent sand from getting in their shoes.

Sasso and fellow volunteer Cassie Lawson were leading the students as part of a partnership with the Buzzards Bay Coalition and New Bedford Public Schools Sea Lab to help connect inner-city students with the bay and foster a love of the environment.

This was the first year of the partnership, which was made possible in part by Sasso and Lawson, who have been assisting the coalition since August year as part of the Commonwealth Corps — a nonprofit organization that places young adults in community service roles throughout the state for one year.

In the 2012-13 school year, every fourth-grade class in the city was able to explore East Beach with Sasso and Lawson as part of Sea Lab's partnership with the coalition.

On Friday, Sasso and Lawson taught the students about the different animals that live on the beach, then sent them on a shell scavenger hunt to find slipper shells, quahogs, bay scallops and mermaid's toenails.

The students ran up and down the beach to collect their samples and write down their findings.

"You guys are going to be scientists," Sasso told them.

Fourth-grader Cheyenne Rodrigues said she was having fun on the beach learning about some familiar shells.

"I have a collection at home, but I didn't know what they were called," she said.

Sea Lab facilitator Simone Bourgeois said the program helped give "a new flavor" to the marine life curriculum fourth-graders learn in their classrooms year-round.

"There's a difference between learning about the balanced ecosystem in a classroom and going out and seeing it," she said.

"There's various ways of learning, and this is a way that excites the students," Bourgeois said.

Rob Hancock, vice president of education for the coalition, said even students who had been to the beach before learned a unique lesson.

"It's about more than water to splash in and sand to build castles with. There's a whole world living on the beach that's equally fun," he said.